Chennai: Around 10 South African nationals who went missing in Bengaluru were traced by the civic body and police officials in the capital city of Karnataka on Saturday. As South Africans fall into the high-risk category in Omicron fear, authorities in Bengaluru tried to trace them and send their swabs for testing.
However, all these could be traced only on Saturday.
According to an IANS report, after two patients tested positive for the Omicron variant in Bengaluru, health department officials were concerned about the spread of COVID-19 from people who returned from high-risk countries.
Therefore, they decided to trace, test and track the movement of South Africa. However, 10 South African nationals of the passengers who reached Bengaluru went missing as they were not at their given address and their phones were switched off.
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Following this, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike worked with the police to conduct a joint operation and the team eventually traced South Africa. Now the swabs of all these have been sent for examination. All the passengers reached Bengaluru between November 12 and November 22.
Totally, 57 passengers reached Bengaluru from high risk areas during the time span of 10 days. Health officials in Bengaluru are also planning to send samples of the remaining people who returned from high-risk places other than South Africa to get clarity on the presence of omicrons in the state.
So far, four cases of the Omicron variant have been detected in India. Out of the four, two cases were detected in Bengaluru, while one case was reported from Gujarat and the other from Maharashtra on Saturday.
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